At the County Building with the Jewish community celebrating Tisha B’Av, a Jewish religious holiday commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples and the sufferings inflicted upon God’s people by injustice and social sin. Rabbis and inter-faith clergy shared in the prayer calling attention to the concentration camps, racism and El Paso shootings.

Gospel Reflection: What Kind of Peace Do We Bring to the World?

Last week we read Lk 12:32-48, in which Jesus-as-the Christ broke through the Gentile mindset fixated on a caste system of levels of privilege. Jesus’ social critique was rooted in Jewish social ethics in which all people are charged with the responsibility to care for one another without regard to one’s socio-economic status. We explored the social difficulty Gentile had in letting go of privilege in order to embrace all persons regardless of race, social status, and gender.

Today’s gospel passage underscores the difficult choices that discipleship demands: you have to make a choice. Do we baptize the Empire and its culture of privilege or do we renounce the Empire? Luke’s gospel does not provide a mix and match or buffet option of take what you like and leave what you do not like. The foundational condition of being a disciple of Jesus-as-the Christ is to make the hard decision whether your raison d’être is to maintain your status quo with a few minor adjustments in your life or to give your whole self to God.

In Judaism conversion to become a Jew was not a casual thing. One had to discuss the intent to convert with a rabbi. With the rabbi the potential convert would have to undergo rigorous instruction on Jewish life, beliefs, history, liturgy, learn Hebrew (for the prayers) become involved in the community and accept the divinity of the Torah. The convert would have to agree to observe all 613 mitzvot (commandments), life fully a Jewish life, undergo circumcision (if male) be immersed in a mikveh (baptism) and appear before at Bet Din (a religious court) for approval of the conversion. The conversion process was not a matter of taking classes, but of becoming a disciple of a particular rabbi in a particular community.

As we know, members of Luke’s community were not Jews and thus they may not have been made aware of the strenuous process needed to become a Jew. The controversy of whether Gentiles should become Jews before becoming Christians was resolved in the Christian Council of Jerusalem about 15 years prior to Luke’s narrative, thus Gentiles could convert directly to become disciples in the lineage of Jesus. But this did not mean that conversion to Christianity was easier than converting to Judaism. The literary evidence in Luke’s gospel suggests that the process of becoming a disciple of Jesus-as-the Christ post Resurrection, was similar in rigor as one would undergo in becoming a Jew. Like potential Jewish converts, Christian converts had to be clear about their intent on being baptized and they had to participate in community life as a part of their conversion process. Note that Lk 12:50 references baptism and thus, baptism was not merely signaling a theological conversion or denominational change, but that baptism signaled a commitment to help usher in the kingdom of God. “There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!”

The Christian testament includes letters to the Christian communities that were directed mostly to Gentile converts to Christianity who were mostly from the slave and servant classes, (but also included freed persons and smaller number of people of means). These letters served as reminders that once baptized, all the baptized were obligated to care for one another, especially the most vulnerable among them. Since most of those letters predated Luke’s gospel and that the letters began to be circulated throughout the region, it would not be unreasonable to believe that Luke’s community had a minimum understanding of the importance of equality and mutual care that transcended mere blood ties, but was extended to anyone in need. The Empire did not specifically discourage caring for the poor and vulnerable, but it was clear that caring for the poor was a laudable thing, but not an ethical demand as it was in Judaism and the emerging Christian religion.

The kingdom of God: economic equality, radical inclusion of all people, and special care for the most vulnerable who are not related by blood, does more than disrupt the Empire, it sets it on fire! (c.f., “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” Lk 12: 49) In short, today’s passage is a statement of the consequence of choosing God over the Empire: Division! More than merely disrupting the Empire, Jesus-as-the Christ annihilates the Empire by dismantling the Empire’s social system, beginning with paterfamilias, the social pecking order of the Roman family, (c.f., “From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three…” Lk 12:52, ff).

The reflection is based on the socio-historical location of Luke’s narrative, but given that we are living in the midst of an Empire, might we take this time to consider the level of commitment demanded of us in the same way that disciples had to consider in the time of Luke? What was our level of commitment to the well-being of others, particularly the poor, when we were baptized? If that commitment was made for us by parents and godparents, was there any time in our life when we made an adult decision to choose the kingdom of God over the Empire?

Weekly Intercessions A recent article published in USA Today (USA Today republished the original article, “For Latinos, Fear in America becomes real, powerful,” by Thomas Hawthorne, The Republic, AzCentral.Com) said that the “fear among Latino people is palpable…” after the El Paso shooting. The article said that the shooting was a turning point that “…peeled back the hate behind words they’ve tried to ignore. It has sliced open the racism many grew up learning to navigate.” A newly issued report on racism from Grupo Solidaridad shows that the weaponization of racism, when left unopposed, will merely increase in intensity and cause greater harm to the Latinx community. History has shown that racism has been used in many different cultures as a way to lift up one group above others or to place a social pecking order which valued the lives of those who found themselves categorized at the top of the order over those who found themselves at the bottom of the list. Preferences based on race physical characteristics were discussed in ancient Greece and Rome. In the late 19th and early 20th century the Eugenics Movement had great sway over England and the US. Supporter included Alexander Graham Bell, Stanford President David Starr Jordan and Luther Burbank! An English scholar, Sir Francis Galton systematized the ideas of racial and physical preference and, after reading Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, he proposed that societies should refrain from protecting the vulnerable and the weak so societies can improve. He believed that the less intelligent were more fertile and had more children. He encouraged a change in social mores that would encourage more “acceptable” people to procreate. Eugenics rationalized restrictive immigration policies barring non-white immigration in the 1800’s until the 1960’s and when the Nazis were placed on trial after WWII, many war criminals justified the Nazi racial and purification laws were inspired by policies of the United States! Sadly racism is embedded in science, public policy and politics and when unchecked, racism has and will escalate to genocide. Let us pray for the courageous civil rights activists who work to dismantle the infamous legacy of racism in the US and abroad. Let us also pray for our sisters and brothers who feel the sting of racial animus every day.

Threats of Mass Deportation – What to do? Should we take Trump’s threat to deport millions of people seriously? Yes and no. Looking at this threat form practical level, DHS is not staffed to accomplish this goal….but we cannot simply ignore Trump’s threat because his immigration policy is geared toward deportation. Immigration activists and Grupo Solidaridad are working alongside accompaniment teams that provide emotional and spiritual support and help connecting to social services, legal resources to ensure due process under the Constitution is respected, and advocates who work to shape public policy and hold public officials accountable to ensure that immigrants are respected at work and school, secure in their communities, and able to engage in their own public affairs. Watch for TEXT ALERTS over these next few days for alerts on events and actions that support our immigrant community in the Valley.

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Read the paper from our last Grupo discussion by clicking the link below:

A federal appeals court just ruled against Trump on DACA! DO NOT WAIT TO RENEW YOUR DACA. DO IT NOW.

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Grupo Solidaridad is a part of an on-going community project of Catholic Charities’ division, Advocacy and Community Engagement. For more information on how to get involved in Grupo Solidaridad, its activities or other groups associated with Grupo Solidaridad, contact Fr. Jon Pedigo atjpedigo@CatholicCharitiesSCC.org